Racking

Last night we racked the beer to the secondary fermenter. For all you non-beer nerd types out there (I'm looking at you, Mrs. Donnelly) that means we transferred it from the glass carboy its been fermenting in for the last week into a second glass carboy. The idea is to move just the beer and leave behind all the sediment and gunk produced during the initial fermentation stage. Here are some pictures of the gunk:





When we opened the primary carboy, we were pleasantly surprised that it actually smelled like Kwak (which is the sort of beer we're aiming for). We don't expect the final product to be an exact replica - we will, in fact, be happy if neither of us goes blind or dies of food poisoning - but we are quite pleased with the results so far.

The only downside to date is that the specific gravity isn't quite what we would like it to be, but we never expected to hit our targets spot on. Accuracy in this area will come from experience.


Having measured the specific gravity, we decided to taste it, although at this stage it has not finished fermenting and still has a lot of yeast in suspension. I poured the contents into two glasses:


Donnelly, however, had other ideas!


This is the beer as it now looks:


It will sit like that for another couple of weeks, then we will keg it and bottle it and, finally, drink it. With any luck, we will only have to taste it on the way down.